Dirk Niepelt

The BIS has issued two reports that assess the implications of unconventional monetary policies. The report prepared by the Committee on the Global Financial System discusses … a number of unconventional monetary policy tools (UMPTs). After a decade of experience with UMPTs the report takes stock of central banks’ experience and draws some lessons for the future. The report focuses on four sets of tools: negative interest rate policies, new central bank lending operations, asset purchase...

In the July issue of the American Economic Review, Ruben Durante, Paolo Pinotti, and Andrea Tesei argue that entertainment TV has shaped Italian politics and affected the cognitive skills of viewers. From the abstract: We study the political impact of commercial television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi’s private TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset all-entertainment content were more likely to vote...

There is widespread international interest in CBDC, Libra, and the like. E.g., my VoxEU column on Libra and CBDC is discussed on the Czech news platform patria.cz. And my JME paper with Markus Brunnermeier is discussed on the Turkish site digitalage.com.tr.

My VoxEU column now also on finews and World News Monitor, September 17, 2019. Digital currencies involve tradeoffs. Libra resolves them less favorably than other projects, and less favorably than CBDC. When confronted with the choice between the status quo and a new financial architecture with CBDC, most central banks have responded cautiously. But Libra or its next best replica will take this choice off the table – the status quo ceases to be an option. The new choice for monetary...

On swissinfo.ch, Fabio Canetg explains how the Swiss National Bank prevents banks from hoarding cash rather than holding reserves at the central bank (which pay negative interest). He points to the following sentence in the SNB’s December 2014 press release (my emphasis) and he speculates that banks could, in principle, implement similar schemes to keep depositors from withdrawing cash: The threshold currently corresponds to 20 times the minimum reserve requirement for the reporting...

This is blog post #1000.

VoxEU, September 12, 2019. HTML. Digital currencies involve tradeoffs. Libra resolves them less favorably than other projects, and less favorably than CBDC. When confronted with the choice between the status quo and a new financial architecture with CBDC, most central banks have responded cautiously. But Libra or its next best replica will take this choice off the table – the status quo ceases to be an option. The new choice for monetary authorities and regulators will be one between...

Journal of Monetary Economics, with Markus Brunnermeier. PDF. When does a swap between private and public money leave the equilibrium allocation and price system unchanged? To answer this question, the paper sets up a generic model of money and liquidity which identifies sources of seignorage rents and liquidity bubbles. We derive sufficient conditions for equivalence and apply them in the context of the “Chicago Plan”, cryptocurrencies, the Indian de-monetization experiment, and Central...

MA course at the University of Bern. Time: Wed 10-12. KSL course site. Course assistant: Christian Wipf. The course introduces Master students to modern macroeconomic theory. Building on the analysis of the consumption-saving tradeoff and on concepts from general equilibrium theory, the course covers workhorse general equilibrium models of modern macroeconomics, including the representative agent framework, the overlapping generations model, and possibly the Lucas tree model. Lectures...

Huw van Steenis’ summarizes his report as follows (my emphasis): A new economy is emerging driven by changes in technology, demographics and the environment. The UK is also undergoing several major transitions that finance has to respond to. What this means for finance Finance is likely to undergo intense change over the coming decade. The shift to digitally-enabled services and firms is already profound and appears to be accelerating. The shift from banks to market-based finance is...